Bear and Wolf, seeing that everything is under control, are galloping about, sniffing at us to smell us calming down, and running after the woman to sniff her and see what she’s up to. She shoos them off and keeps bumping her screaming baby up the track. It can’t be easy, coz the stroller is loaded down with bags of belongings, but she makes it to the path and across the bridge and starts running.
‘Wait!’ I say. ‘Are you okay? Do you need water or something to eat?’
‘Let her go,’ Emery says.
‘But it’s hot. What if she didn’t have time to fill her water bottle?’ I ask.
‘Never tell anyone we have food,’ Emery says and shoves Oyster away so there’s a big gap between her and Maroochy.
‘It’s only cans of fish,’ I say.
‘Yeah, well, they’ll find that out after they shoot us, won’t they?’
‘What do you mean?’
‘What if that woman runs into some mean people further up the path, and they grab her baby and she tells them there’s a couple of kids under the bridge who offered her food? What do you think those mean people do next?’
‘Oh,’ I say.
‘That woman’s doing the right thing. Stay away from other people. Mind your own business. Get out of the city.’
‘So we can’t be nice to anyone?’ I ask.
‘It’s a new world, Els. You can’t trust people like you used to.’
The wailing of the toddler is getting quieter and quieter as the woman runs away.
‘But we’re not different,’ I say. ‘There’s gotta be people like us who are still nice and caring.’ I don’t think Dad meant, when he said we had to learn to walk on our heads, that we needed to be worse people.
‘Let’s hope they’re the only ones we run into, then,’ Emery says as he pushes Oyster and Squid’s leads into my hand and pulls Maroochy away back to the creek. We both know that’s too much to hope for, coz we’ve already seen the gangs of people in the city who just take what they want.
I wade into the creek, towing Oyster and Squid, and get down on hands and knees and drink as much of the water as I can. It doesn’t matter if I get my clothes all wet, coz they’re already wet from sweat, and I’ll dry out.
I’m nervous now about being under the bridge and that woman telling people we’re here, like Emery said. But the dogs need rest and it’s too hot to have their paws up there on the concrete. So after Oyster and Squid have drunk and cooled themselves off in the creek, I tie them to a bush in the shade of the bridge and sit down with them, and the other dogs stretch out on the cool creek mud in front of us and sleep through the heat of the day. Emery must be nervous, too, coz he organises the cart and gang lead, ready to go, and won’t sit down with me and the dogs and rest until he’s checked every wet harness each dog is still wearing, each paw to make sure they’re okay, and made sure every dog is ready to clip back in.
When the sun gets lower, we all fill up on water once more and Emery opens another couple of cans of sardines, and the dogs get three each and me and Emery get one each. We head off again, the sun low in our faces, one tiny sardine in our bellies to stop us from starving.
The dogs are less excited this time and the fierce gallop slows straight away to a trot. We keep going till the sun goes down and the sky is just a glow of light behind far-off hills and it’s almost too dark to see the concrete path. We find somewhere off to the side, under some trees, the dirt all smoothed out and hard from sheep or cows sheltering from the sun there, way back before they all got eaten, back when this was paddocks of grass.
It’s water from the pot for everyone and more sardines, which I would hate but I’m too starving. Then we lay out the tent and unroll sleeping bags on top, and with dogs either side of us, I feel safe, and I think about Dad out there somewhere, and has he found Mum yet. Did he already come back and knows we’ve gone?
When I close my eyes, I keep seeing all those grey and red-brown dry paddocks rolling by. Only weeds and prickles. No grass anywhere. All that dead dirt.
Dad said he never realised before how much grass he used to eat. Bread and rice, and noodles, and corn, and meat, and dairy, and even his beer, all made of grass. He said he was just another cow, about to starve. Then he shook his head and looked at me like he shouldn’t have said that.
‘How did we get so that most of our food came from one kind of plant? All our eggs were in one basket,’ he said to me, but not really expecting an answer.
I said, ‘Don’t worry, Dad. Baskets are made of grass and eggs came from wheat-eating chooks, so we won’t do that again!’
He wrestled me and called me cheeky and rubbed my short-clipped hair for that.
I smile, thinking about him, and fall asleep with him so close.
It’s real cold in the night and I lie staring up through black branches at the stars. I wish we’d set up the tent but the dogs huddle closer and, soon enough, the low morning sun creeps in under the trees and warms my back. I’m real tired but Emery is up and packing the cart right away, so I have to crawl out of the sleeping bag and go find somewhere to pee. Then I just stand around on the bare dry dirt in the low sun and stare at the naked land.
In the cracks of the dirt at my feet there’s a few weeds trying to take over, stems flat and pink and tiny green round leaves.
I can’t stop this idea that over the hills somewhere, there are fields of green grass dotted with sheep. Wheat fields shining yellow in the sun. That somehow, if we just run far enough, we’ll get there. But I saw on the news, before they stopped the TV stations, that there’s no grass anywhere in the whole world no more. No rice in Asia even, with all those people needing it. No maize in Africa, and no corn in America. And no way to grow enough potatoes, pumpkins and cabbage to replace them in time. I think that’s why they stopped showing us the news. They didn’t want us to be scared.
The trees there are out here look thirsty and dry when there’s no grass around them, and even in this hardly-anything light, the red bare dirt is hot to look at. It hasn’t stopped patches of pale grey prickles from taking hold though, and other weeds, spindly and dry.
Rooch, Wolf and Bear are all sniffing around a group of trees and looking up like maybe there’s a possum up there, as Emery gives Oyster and Squid some water and straps them into the cart.
Then he calls the other dogs over one by one and gives them some water too and straps them in. There’s no fish for any of us this morning. I think we’re down to just two cans and we’ve still got a long way to go.
There’s a far-off roar and rumbling and I run to the cart behind the trees and pull the dogs back, tuck in behind the tree trunks, help Emery to keep the dogs quiet by hanging onto Oyster and Squid’s noses and pulling their heads in tight to my belly, covering their ears with my elbows, whispering, ‘Shush, shush, shush now.’
Three motorbikes speed past on the bike path, the roar of them so loud, echoing around this empty land, bouncing off bare hills, that it surrounds us and thumps into my heart, sets it rumbling like it never knew its own beat, and the dogs hear my heart gone mad and whimper and pull away. Maroochy growls like she’s a great big motorbike, and I think the riders will hear her. But the bikers and their rumbling-bellied bikes speed on by.
Emery shakes his head. ‘We need to get further out, real quick,’ he whispers. ‘This is just a daytrip from the city for people like that.’
And I don’t know for sure what he means when he says ‘people like that’ but three guys on motorbikes probably aren’t out for a fun ride like in the old days. They’re probably looking for food, and most people don’t want to give up what food they got.
So we set up the cart again and lead the dogs back to the bike track. And both of us stand there looking along it. Looking for the tail lights of those motorbikes. Emery is standing, holding Roochy’s neck fur with one hand, rubbing at the back of his own neck with the other, like he does when he’s worried.
He tells Rooch to sit, and comes back to the cart, hauls out
the map and studies it, running his finger along a dotted line.
‘Probably,’ he says slowly. ‘Probably they won’t be back for a while. The nearest town is maybe half an hour away for them.’
I nod. ‘We should hear them before they see us,’ I say, but as we set off again, my ears burn to hear that rumble bouncing off the hills.
Almost an hour, maybe, we’re running, tyres of the cart muttering on the concrete, my ears straining like mad. Then concrete changes to pressed shell rock, which puffs up under the claws of the dogs. The sun is up and the dogs are panting, and we go almost half an hour more, then Emery calls, ‘Easy! Easy, Roochy! Haw!’ and Roochy looks back, to check he’s serious and slows the other dogs and pulls them off the track, into a wide flat paddock.
‘We should go overland,’ Emery says to me, and we head off across a dusty, dry paddock that maybe once had sheep or cows but now is just bare dirt and prickles, weeds, fence posts leaning, wire broken or gone, gates left open anyway.
We’re moving slower than on the bike track, winding through the paddocks, the cart bumping along, but I’m feeling better that we’re here, where nobody goes, dipping down between small hills, behind blocks of trees so we’re kind of sheltered from the world passing by on tracks and roads. We’re away from men on motorbikes. We’re away from people, and I’m thinking that people are scary now, scary like snakes. I don’t know if they’re gonna attack us or run away like that woman with the baby did. But I’m hoping they’re gonna run away. Always run away.
We stop and rest under some trees when the sun gets too high in the sky. Emery opens the last two cans of fish and shares it out to the dogs. None for us. He looks at me like I might argue as the last sliver of fish slides down Squid’s throat, not even chewed, just gulped whole and Squid straight away looking for more, licking oil from Emery’s fingers, so excited.
‘We don’t get anywhere if they can’t run,’ I say, like I believe there’s food somewhere out there where we’re headed, but really, I think maybe me and Emery are just gonna starve.
I drink a gulp of water to fill the ache in my belly, and pour water into the pot for the dogs, then we all sleep the warm afternoon away in a pile together in the shade. I’m so tired with no food to keep me going. So tired.
I wake up scared when I hear motors and shouting and see Emery and Rooch standing and the other dogs with their ears pointing straight up. I’m not used to hearing motors in old cars, coz I been living in the city full of electric cars. It fades like it’s people driving away and shouting at each other.
Emery shakes his head and sits back down.
When Emery wakes me again to keep going, I’m still too tired to wake up properly, so I just sit on the standing board of the cart, with my feet in the webbing basket, and watch the dirt slide under us as we head across the country once more. When the sun gets low in the sky and the air gets cooler, I wake up and struggle to my feet. We’re running alongside a road. Not a sealed road though, just two tracks in shingle, and there’s something way ahead in the road.
Emery takes us way around it, out to some trees and a dip in the land. And when we’re nearly level with the thing in the road, I make out a bridge, collapsed in the middle and on the other side sits a big old horse truck parked crossways on the road, with a sign on it saying ‘Road Closed’. A couple of old cars and some tractor ploughs and other farm stuff make a massive roadblock that no cars or motorbikes are going to get past in a hurry.
Once we go down the dip, cross a creek and climb up again on some old sheep track, looking back, there’s a couple of men sitting there up against the horse truck, on white plastic chairs working on getting a little fire going between them, dropping bits of cardboard or something on it, and chatting and laughing. A couple of rifles sit propped up against the chairs.
I duck lower on the cart and Emery takes it back down inside the dip.
‘I don’t think they saw us,’ he says.
I nod. I feel like we’re a long way from any highways here but still there’s a lot of people and houses around. This isn’t the outback, even surrounded by all this bare red dirt. This was once all farmland and maybe people have stayed on to grow potatoes or something. After all, they’d be better off than we were in the city, waiting on food deliveries that ain’t never coming.
We stay in the dip and eventually it curves around back towards the shingle road, so we go alongside that again for a while.
There’s a house ahead sitting at the end of a drive, surrounded by trees. Out to one side there’s rows of green plants and a few big squares of green. But it can’t be grass, can it?
‘Do you think anyone’s there?’ I ask as we get closer.
‘It’s got fruit trees,’ Emery says, and he sucks in his lips and swallows. For his small size, he’s always been a big eater, so he’s probably even hungrier than me. We both want some fruit. But what if someone’s there?
There’s a fence around the fruit trees, and when the dogs trot us around the corner of the fruit tree fence to the back, there’s an old woman in an apron sitting there, milking a goat. The goat bleats out a warning and the woman jumps up.
‘Woah!’ Emery says to Maroochy and jumps off and runs to hold her head.
‘It’s a couple of kids and a pile of dogs!’ the woman calls as she stares at us.
A man steps out of the trees then. He’s got a gun under his arm and he’s wearing a chequered shirt in grey and red. A bucket with some fruit in it swings in his hand, and he looks us up and down.
‘Well,’ he says, ‘what’s this contraption?’
Emery says, real quick, ‘It’s a mushing cart, sir. Like they use in Alaska, but with wheels. We didn’t mean to be on your land without permission.’
‘You gave us a fright, but it’s all right, kid. Most of it’s not good for much now anyway,’ the man says. ‘How did you get past the roadblock?’
‘We’re not using roads, we’re travelling overland. Just passing through. On our way to my mum’s place,’ Emery says.
‘Where’s she live then?’ the man asks.
‘Up country, sir,’ Emery says all vague.
‘Where’s your parents?’ the woman asks.
‘My mum’s up country,’ Emery says again. ‘Dad’s following us up here, maybe a day behind.’
I look at Emery saying that like it’s a real thing. I hope it’s a thing that will happen.
‘We’re just wondering if we can camp somewhere near here, down at the creek maybe, to rest the dogs and catch them some eels to eat. Maybe if there’s still some roos about, or possums, you wouldn’t mind if we killed them to feed the dogs?’
‘Kid, I can’t kill those sickly roos fast enough,’ the man says. ‘They’re all skin and bone, living off just weeds, help yourself.’
‘Ted, they can stay in the house, we’ve got spare rooms and plenty of food,’ the woman says.
And the idea of sleeping in a bed and having a shower and eating good food makes me smile.
‘No,’ Emery says, wiping the grin off my face. ‘We’ll be fine down by the creek. The dogs are too noisy anyway.’
‘But—’ I say.
Emery shakes his head at me.
‘Well, wait here and I’ll get you something to eat from the house,’ the woman says and hurries towards the back steps.
The man, Ted, holds out the bucket of apples and plums. ‘Want some of these?’ he asks.
‘Yes, please,’ I say. I jump off the cart and hurry to him, take an apple and two plums.
‘Take more,’ he says, hoisting the bucket at me. ‘I was just gonna give them to the goats anyway.’ And I fill the front of my T-shirt with three apples and a whole pile of plums and take them back to my backpack on the cart.
‘We got nothing to trade, sorry,’ Emery says.
‘Don’t you worry,’ Ted says. ‘We’ve got fruit coming out our ears. Only so many preserving jars we can fill. Good to see it not going to waste.’
‘Thank you,’ Emery
says. ‘You know there’s more people heading out of the city, looking for food. And they’re mean-looking.’
‘We’ve seen them. They’ve been here a few times, and we’ve banded together with the other farmers and chased them off. We’re off the main roads,’ Ted says. ‘And we take turns at watching the roadblocks.’
‘We got around the roadblock. Don’t you have any place you could move to out of sight from the road?’ Emery says. ‘Someplace hidden?’
‘Yes, it’s almost coming to that,’ Ted says, nodding slowly like he’s thought of moving already. Then he smiles at the woman coming across from the house with a couple of plastic containers. The first seems to be full of baked potatoes and pumpkin but the second is a big square of bright white stuff, and I think it’s cheese! White goat cheese! I can’t hardly believe it. It’s been so long since we’ve seen any dairy. I just want to rip it open and sink my teeth into it.
‘Oh!’ I say, both hands reaching for it. ‘Thank you!’
‘We’re doing real well out here,’ the woman says. ‘Got the root vegetables in early. Enough for us and a few goats and to trade with neighbours, and the fruit from the orchard, a couple of patches of clover, weeds, and turnips for the goats, and the veggie patch and we’re all set to ride this thing out, till the scientists come up with a way to get rid of the fungus. Are you sure we can’t offer you beds for the night?’
‘No,’ I say. ‘We’ll be okay down at the creek.’
Emery jumps in with, ‘Probably we’ll move on at first light. We don’t want to wake you up.’
She nods, and I stow the plastic containers in my backpack and take out a couple of plums, coz I just have to eat something, right now, even though my mouth is watering for that cheese.
‘Thank you,’ I say again. ‘Thank you so much.’
Emery waves and climbs up onto the cart behind me. ‘Mush!’ he calls to Maroochy and we set off again, across the bare farm, skirting around a giant potato patch and then on down a rough old tractor track towards a creek that just looks like a wobbly line of green trees, cutting through empty red dirt. As we get closer to the banks there are wandering weeds, trying to cover the ground like they want to own it. One is stretching out grey stems across the ground and has flat grey leaves, the other has stems red as the dirt, and tiny green buds of leaves like it’s trying to stay hidden. Maybe it knows there’s goats up the hill.
The Dog Runner Page 4
